Touching her hand, in hindsight, was kind of a… is there such a thing as a mistake you’re glad you made? A good mistake? That. It was that. The world blurred as she pulled me up, followed by flashes of dark, light, dark, light, like driving through a tunnel at night with your headlights off. A sense of movement, but no air movement with it. It felt like hours, just light, dark, light, dark, and… nothing to really see. Again, kind of like a really, really long tunnel. Which, you know, I was dead. Light at the end of the long tunnel, all that. Those memories are still a blur. I remember cold, and rain. Kind of a drizzle. Some building, made out of grey-brown stone. Having seen it again, it looks like some kind of government building, or a particularly boring lawyer’s office. No decor or anything, just some sign, one of those black ones with gold colored metal letters raised from it. Frosted glass windows on either side of the door, which had no windows. I left what I found out was, indeed, a late model Mercedes. Not one of the super expensive ones, but not the base model? I don’t know cars, I just know it had heated seats, which was really choice with the weather as terrible as it was. There was a long hall full of doors, but we turned down a small side corridor towards an office. Whatever was down there wasn’t for me that night.
Things stopped being blurry in a waiting room. Dead serious, it was this kind of drab waiting room, like you’d see in the lobby of… I don’t know, a police station or something. Or a financial advisor’s office. I’m still not entirely sure why there were two chairs in the room, considering how long it felt like I was in there, alone. The door out was right there, too. I could’ve just walked out. It felt weird to do so, though. Kind of like… Imagine somebody loaning you enough money to make rent, and then giving them the finger as they were handing it to you. A lot like that. Rude, ungrateful, kind of generally shitty. I would’ve killed for a phone, though. I just needed to let people know I was okay. …Somehow.
The magazines were this weird mix of stuff from World War I up through the mid-40’s, interspersed with a couple of issues of Vogue from that year, an International Late Edition NY Times for today, and something with a picture of some magic seal that it made my head hurt to look at. I figured it was a religious pamphlet at first, until I looked at the way the text was printed on it. It was this big bunch of weirdly angular, curved symbols, a couple lines of smaller symbols from the same alphabet. Some magazine meant for really, really dedicated occult types or something. I went back to staring at the spot on the far wall where I was fairly certain a clock should be, trying to will one in to existence so I could get a sense of the passage of time. The weird squiggly curve-letters on the magazine had started moving, and I’d seen more than enough Supernatural to know that’s never good.
I’ll admit it, I yelped a little when I looked over and saw the woman from before leaning out from the other door. The blinds had been shut, and I really didn’t feel like bothering whoever had the corner office of the Afterlife Judgment Bureau. Didn’t seem smart to tip the scales any further towards “go directly to hell, do not pass purgatory, do not collect $200” than I thought they might be, you know? I hadn’t been to church in a while, they frowned on that up here, right?
“Edward Knox?” She said, tilting her head, seemingly confused.
“…maybe?” I said, shrinking back as best the chair would allow. If I sat just right, maybe I could summon a hole to fall in, or collapse in to a singularity! Or just stop existing, really, any of those would’ve been great. She sighed at my response.
“I was afraid of this. Come in.” She turned back in to the office, leaving the door open. A moment later, she leaned back out. “You’re not in trouble, Ed. Do you mind if I call you that?” I shook my head in response. “Good. I knew an Edward, once…” she said, trailing off with a small sigh, looking to the side a bit as she did. “Yes, come in. We need to talk, and we should do so quickly.” She turned back in, leaving the door open.
As it stood, I had three options, at least as far as I could tell. First, my favorite of the three, establish a small settlement right there in the waiting room, only breaking free to scavenge whatever could be taken from the vending machines that seemed to sprout from the walls in buildings like this. Whole thing’s covered in dust, yet it still somehow has mostly current cans of Dr. Pepper in it? That right there, that’s weird. Second, I could run like the devil himself was chasing me. Or herself, in this case. Bust through the door to the hall, and either run out in to the rain and hope she didn’t want to get her nurse hat wet, or run down the hall and hope she was the creepiest thing in the building. I mean, for all I knew, she was the ghost that haunted this building, and I’d find some mild-mannered janitor inexplicably played by Dwayne Johnson, or Morgan Freeman, or something. Jack Black as a night watchman with a heart of gold and a magic .357. Considering I’d managed to get shot in an adult-centric arcade/restaurant combo because of a dispute over a girl not but a few hours earlier, I figured my luck wasn’t that good. Option three, I maintain the dumbest of the three, was to go ahead in.
I went ahead in.
Her office was neat, pretty tidy, decorated with some old, weathered-looking black and white photos in nice frames on filing cabinets from before my parents were born, and some on her desk that were just as old, although in better condition. The facial hair some of the guys were sporting was impressive even by hipster standards. Considering the amount of wax involved in one or two, they also looked like a facial fire hazard. Near those, an honest-to-goodness candy jar. The little yellow things were, I found out later, honey drops. I actually carry a couple with me now, they’re really tasty. Good for sore throats. The jar they were in, I’m fairly certain would’ve paid a half semester’s tuition. Fine, clear crystal, like somebody managed to shape and polish ice with the tiniest tools, hours on hours sitting in a freezer with nothing but a block of ice, a Dremel tool, little chisels, and time. Next to that? Last black friday’s business desktop special from Best Buy, the wide screen one with the little square computer you mount on the back. She’d managed to pull off the same aesthetic, black scrubs with a long-sleeved athletic shirt underneath, modern stethoscope, gym shoes, and a nurse’s hat from world war 1. All the questions in my head managed to cram themselves in to my mouth at once, leading to dumbfounded silence as I sat down. Why were her eyes suddenly normal? Where was the trail of blood leading from her mouth and down her chin? Was hell really a bureaucracy?
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Okay, so.” She looked at me from behind steepled fingers, leaning back slightly in her chair as she did. What was that accent, Finnish? “You probably have a lot of questions, and I’ll be more than happy to answer them in due time.” Finnish, yep. Kind of cute, actually? “But right now, time is something we don’t have a lot of. You weren’t supposed to do that, heroic as it was.” The radio played quietly as she spoke, splitting my focus even further. Why did I know that song? Catchy, but where did I know it from? “That throws things in to disarray. If there weren’t witnesses, we could spin it. You’d remember it as a near death experience, call it a miracle. But… too many people saw you die.” Oh, right, duh. That one show they kept in reruns forever, with the two redheaded guys. God, that was a weird show. “Memories are hard to edit. Getting them to all sync up, that’s even worse. You haven’t been pronounced yet, though. So we have a window. A very, very small window, so we’re skipping a hell of a lot. But, the point is this. We can get you back. For a price.” She winced, looking almost apologetic. At least she’d put me in something more comfy than my work shirt at some point. Black hoodie, always a classic. I looked down at myself for a moment, and my brain actually managed to stop entirely. I raised my hand, cutting her off as she continued.
“Ma’am? When did I get boobs? I mean, I’m not mad about it, I don’t think at least. My voice sounds pretty good, too.” Ha HA. For once, it was someone else’s turn to look like they got rabbit punched in the forebrain. I quietly hoped that would give me time to stop freaking out, or that she wouldn’t notice, at least. Her eyes widened, letting me properly see them properly. They were the prettiest shade of icy blue. She could’ve been a model, were it not for the rough demeanor and resting I’m-about-to-shank-you face. She looked a lot less pale, too, like she’d been pulling a shift at fright night and had just finished removing her makeup. Her brow furrowed, mouth still open as her sentence struggled to complete itself. Doing my best to ignore the fact that my voice was suddenly higher, I continued. “And… for that matter, what do you mean ‘window’? I got shot in the heart, man. You don’t really come back from that kind of thing. I mean, I appreciate it, but. I honestly want to see whatever trick you’re going to pull to make me not dead. Don’t stick me in somebody else’s body, though, that’s just creepy.”
“Don’t go writing blank checks like that, for fuck’s sake. I could hold you to that, you know? No price named, even.” She sighed, looking to the ceiling in frustration, like she hoped God would come down and make her day easier. “Tämä on perseestä, I don’t even have time for orientation. Look. I can take you back, you’ll come back to life. But your body’s going to change to reflect your soul. Slowly, but it’s going to change. You’ll need a new name, of course, you don’t look like an Edward. Thankfully people have become accepting of this sort of thing, nowadays.”
“What sort of thing? What do you mean, change? I’m a guy!”
The nurse gave me the sort of look a mother gives their child when they’re caught eating paste. “Are you? Are you really.”
“Yes! Maybe!” I paused, years of repression all shattering in the face of undeniable proof. “…no.” I wasn’t going to cry. I didn’t want to cry in front of some strange woman. Not here, not now.
She circled the desk, trapping me in a hug as the tears began to flow. “Easy. Easy. I’ll explain tomorrow. You want to live, right?” I nodded. “You want to be yourself, right?” I nodded. “Okay. Come with me out to the car. We’ll talk on the way back. Ok?”
“Ok.” I nodded. She took a few pieces of candy from the jar, pressed them in to my hand, and led me from the office. Back out in to the rain we went, walking the short distance to her car. Someone had parked behind her in the short time we’d been in her office, a steel grey Charger that looked like it had just rolled off the lot. I sat in the front seat, next to her, and off we sped, back in to the tunnel.
“The short version is this. You can come back to life, but your soul is going to shine through, no matter how much you try to hide it. Call it a perk of the job, in your case, you can transition without the pills.” She gestured with her hands as she spoke, always keeping one hand on the wheel and her eyes on the road. “The catch is that on top of living your life as it was, you’re going to be getting a second job. It does pay, we all make sure of that, but you don’t really have a choice in the matter, and you can’t just up and quit. You’ll be doing for others what I did for you this evening. It’s a bit like Uber or Lyft, but your customers aren’t ever happy to see you. Not usually, at least,” she said with a smirk as she looked over at me. “You’ll be getting a car if you don’t already have one. If you do, you’ll receive upgrades for it. Simple repairs, better parts for your engine. Repairs to the interior. Better locks. Reapers can’t just go and let people out in the middle of the tunnel, it never ends well. We’ll train you to get you up to speed, but there’s only so much that you can learn in a class. The only real learning is by doing, reppana.”
“Wait, I don’t get a say in the matter?” I asked, already knowing the answer.
“Do you want to live?”
“Of course, I mean—”
“Then no, you don’t, kultaseni. You’ll do the job, and you get to live as a result.” The car drove on, heading in to darkness.